Facebook is throwing some major dollars into promoting their Live video platform. Are we falling for it hook, line and Chewie Mask?

Zuckerberg really wants his new Facebook Live platform to succeed. In fact, he wants it so badly that he’s willing to pay around $50 million to media brands and celebrities to use it, according to Ben Lawson in AJC.com.

“Buzzfeed and The New York Times are the two highest-paid media companies helping jump-start Facebook’s live platform, with contracts worth more than $3 million each, The Wall Street Journal reported. But there are 17 contracts on the list for more than $1 million each,” Lawson says.

And of course, who can forget the Chewbacca Mom, whose Laughing Mask Lady video blew the doors off the Facebook Live platform and landed her major network air time.

For Facebook, with a goal of keeping people on their platform longer, the investment is probably worth it.

“The company has said that people spend three times longer watching live video and comment 10 times more,” Lawson reports, so paying brands to engage fans for them kinda makes sense.

Meanwhile, there is plenty of pushback on the video takeover of the FB feed, even while brands fall all over themselves to create video content. Since Facebook has yet to offer a way for brands to monetize their own videos, we can’t really understand it. Maybe they are hoping to cash in on part of that $50 million pot of gold before the video bubble bursts. Who knows.

From where we sit, it’s more of Facebook’s attempt to get – and keep – our attention, constantly and without end, as publishers willingly hand over their content in a massive migration to platform publishing while feeding on the scraps of FB’s profits.

It’s not going to end well for media brands; Facebook is in this to win this, and publishers seem to think they have no choice but to oblige.

But hey, that Chewbacca Mom was pretty funny, so whatever, we’ll keep watching.